Tag: Newbery

The Last Cuentista by Donna Barba Higuera

The Cover of The Last Cuentista sits atop streaks of red and blue paint. On the cover, a painting in reds and blues of a girl's face and upper torso. She appears to be sleeping. Behind her are jungle leaves and a sickle moon.

The Last Cuentista, by Donna Barba Higuera, is such a good book. Strong characters, fascinating family dynamics, storytelling… And a run for the stars as the world crumbles around the characters.  And that’s just the beginning. Seriously, this is a fabulous story that makes me think about the importance of stories, of imagination, and of […]

Good Masters! Sweet Ladies!

The Cover of Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! by Laura Amy Schlitz shows children and animals playing in front of Tudor-style houses.

Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! surprised me. First of all, it’s not fiction–at least, not exactly. It’s a series of brilliant, connected, historical, one-person monologues.  Apparently, it came out of a research seminar that a library was doing for young people on middle age life. The final project was meant to be a play, but naturally, […]

Neil Gaiman’s Graveyard Book

Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book hovers over a barren graveyard landscape.

I wouldn’t have guessed that Neil Gaiman‘s The Graveyard Book was my kind of book. I’m not usually into the macabre or horror. But it is. It really is. I like the strongly developed characters in here. They’re quirky, but not so quirky that they seem flat or impossible. I also like the adventures that […]

When You Reach Me

A mock up of Rebecca Stead's When You Reach Me hangs in the air in front of a dark vortex

Rebecca Stead’s When You Reach Me is a beautifully written book that walks a tightrope between reality and fantasy–or maybe sci-fi. Miranda’s neighbor, a boy she’s been friends with forever, suddenly wants nothing to do with her. An exploration of friendship follows. Miranda makes friends, learns to be a good friend, and gains understanding of […]

Moon over Manifest

The cover of Clare Vanderpool's Moon over Manifest on top of cracked dry earth. The cover shows a girl in blue overalls balancing on one rail of some railroad tracks as she walks along.

Clare Vanderpool‘s Moon over Manifest immerses readers in a small town where a new girl is discovering herself and her roots all at once. Abilene Tucker wants to ride the rails with her father. Unfortunately, he has sent her to Manifest for the summer (or maybe longer). He seems to think she needs something more […]

Dead End in Norvelt

The cover of Dead End in Norvelt shows a Dead End sign covering a boy's face. In the background, a plane skywrites Jack Gantos's name in a blue sky with a few puffy clouds.

Jack Gantos‘s Dead End in Norvelt is a funny middle-grade book about a young man growing up in a town founded by Eleanor Roosevelt. Jack gets in trouble with his parents and spends the rest of the book grounded. His only amusement is helping the eccentric neighbor woman, Miss Volker. As amusements go, Miss Volker […]

The One and Only Ivan

The cover of The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate shows a gorilla sitting back to back with a baby elephant in a spotlight. Around them are shadows.

The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate is a sweet, well-written book. It features a gorilla who makes art (and throws his own scat) in a small cage in a run-down mall circus. The story is told from Ivan’s point of view (Ivan is the gorilla). Instead of being disastrous, this choice is brilliant. […]

Flora & Ulysses

The cover of Kate DiCamillo's Flora & Ulysses, surrounded by greenery, and framed with a typewriter, a vacuum cleaner, a pair of sunglasses, a teacup, a donut, and a necktie.

If you need a fun, quick read that’s delightfully magical and laugh-out-loud funny, Flora & Ulysses is a great pick. Flora is a wonderful character. Smart and cynical, she nonetheless manages to be be sweet. Also, her ability to accept the incredible (but true) is refreshing. I wonder, in fact, if that ability to accept […]

The Crossover

Cover of The Crossover by Kwame Alexander--silhouette of a boy twirling a ball made of words on one finger

The Crossover, by Kwame Alexander, is a gorgeous novel in verse. In lyrical language it sings…and seduces…and transports.   In fact, The Crossover is a bit magical. I know that, because partway through reading it, I imagined I actually wanted to get out and play basketball. Anyone who knows me will understand the magic of […]

The Girl who Drank the Moon

A hardback copy of The Girl who Drank the Moon--without its jacket-- sits atop a fan, and pictures of paper cranes swarm above it.

I have loved The Girl Who Drank the Moon since I first read it when my daughter picked it up for a contest back when she was in fifth grade. So, several years, now. Like all the best fantasies, this one immerses me in a world that feels both familiar and wonderfully different from the […]

Merci Suárez Changes Gears

The cover of Merci Suarez Changes Gears is shown in small form on a cell phone in black and white. ON the cover, a girl rides a bicycle along a row of houses.

In Merci Suárez Changes Gears, Merci lives in las casitas–three pink houses in a row in Florida that she shares with not just her immediate family, but also her extended family. Lolo and Abuela live in the middle house, and much of this book is about Merci’s relationship with Lolo. Just as Merci struggles with […]

New Kid

New Kid--by Jerry Craft The book sits on a chair On the cover, a kid in a gray hoodie and black slacks scribbles in a notebook

New Kid, by Jerry Craft was 2020’s Newbery award winner. Like other Newberys, it is incredibly well-written, and rich in detail. It has well-rounded characters and a tale that tugs on my heartstrings. Unlike any other Newbery I’ve read, it is also a graphic novel. The artwork is gorgeous, and I particularly love the art […]

Sarah, Plain and Tall

The cover of Sarah, Plain and Tall (from a screenshot on my computer) shows a woman and a couple of children in old-fashioned clothes walking up a path through flat farmland.

I’ve often heard that Sarah, Plain and Tall is a very good book, but somehow I hadn’t read it before. It’s a deceptively simple story, short, with easy-to-read language. Despite its simplicity, the story packs a big emotional punch. Sarah, who is in fact plain and tall, comes from her home near the sea to […]

Bridge to Terabithia

Cover for Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Patterson (Special 40th anniversary Edition) on a computer screen. Picture--Silhouette of girl swinging on rope from a tree across a gully toward silhouette of boy next to taller tree. Background blues with stars, silhouette of a pink/purple castle foggy in the background.

I read Bridge to Terabithia once long ago, and my memory of it was fuzzy–only that it was a very good book, and that it made me sad. When a student needed to read it for a class, I was glad to pick up a copy and read along. And, having read it again, I […]

Holes

A paperback copy of Holes sits next to a dirty trowel. On the cover, there's a lunar-like landscape the top of a boy's head near the bottom. He's wearing a red cap.

This book has been on my shelf for quite some time, and somehow I never felt like picking it up. Maybe the cover was too bland. Maybe the Newbery sticker faded into the sand. I don’t know. This weekend, though, I picked it up off the shelf, and wow. I like Stanley and Hector and […]

Jacob Have I Loved

On the cover, a girl made of light strides across a view of a person in a canoe at sunset. Across the water is the title "Jacob have I loved" and the author Katherine Paterson

Such a good book–and if I found myself a bit disappointed in the end, it’s only because the rest of the book was so astonishingly intense. For hours, I lived in the mind of Sara Louise Bradshaw, a girl growing up in the shadow of her beautiful and talented twin–feeling tall, awkward and unloved, but […]

Hello, Universe

It’s easy to see why Hello, Universe won the Newbery this year. The kids in this story are quirky, delightfully complex, and easy to believe in and sympathize with. Even Chet, the stereotypical bully, is not nearly so stereotypical as he first appears. Don’t get me wrong. He’s still a bully, and as such, largely […]